Open thread: the demise of religiosity in society

July 17, 2015 • 2:54 pm

By Grania

I apologize for two open threads in two days, Jerry’s back on the road and I had Stuff & Things to do today.

Here’s another question that Jerry posed for us to discuss.

If you could change one thing in your society that would lessen religiosity or cause it to gradually disappear*, what would it be?

Again, this very much depends on the country or state in which you live, given the wide variety of laws and the state of individual liberty there.

Here in Ireland, I think the thing that most needs to be changed to undermine an already rapidly dwindling interest in religion is the separation of Church and State in schools across the country.

Teach don’t Preach, Atheist Ireland’s education advocacy campaign notes:

The vast majority of the primary schools in the Republic of Ireland (approximately 3,300) are church controlled, over 90% by the Catholic church and about 6% by Protestant churches. The Irish State provides for education through the Department of Education and Skills and nearly all schools are publicly funded (teachers salaries, school operating costs, school transport, school repairs and building) but essentially privately controlled. The Irish Catholic Bishops say that “Catholic schools seek to reflect a distinctive vision of life and a corresponding philosophy of education, based on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Essentially, nearly all schools in Ireland are paid for by the State, and yet are freely used by the Catholic Church as its main resource for evangelizing and instructing students in its faith and preparing them for Catholic ritual ceremonies during the school day.

If schools followed a multi-denominational model (at worst) or a secular model (preferably) and kept faith instruction as a voluntary after-hours activity, then I suspect that interest in religion would wane even further.

What would you change in your country?

* You can’t cheat and just ban religion. 😉

142 thoughts on “Open thread: the demise of religiosity in society”

    5. First thing I thought of as well. I am troubled by what “rights” or really “privileges” tax-paying churches might demand. By giving them tax-exempt status, the government can keep churches in their place if it chooses to do so. For example, we can keep them from becoming involved directly with government now even though in many ways we don’t bother. I don’t know the legal arguments, but I can hear bombastic, money-driven preachers demanding their rightful place participating in an unfettered manner in politics because they are, after all, tax-paying organizations just like any other and they should be able to contribute at will to political candidates and their campaigns. I’m not sure anything would really change – this is just my fear, but it’s based on religion always getting away with as much as it can without concern for being hypocritical since they believe themselves to be the authorities regarding hypocrisy. They are the best at it, but that doesn’t make them the authorities.

  2. Start slowly and randomly incarcerate every third minster/priest/shaman. Keep meticulous records. And find something for the in heads to do on Wednesday and Sunday I recommend sports or sex or both.

    1. I notice the absence of a release criterion. which is fine – just throw them all onto a convenient island surrounded by lethal seas (sand seas? any suitable bits of the USian SW?) and let their various gods decide who lives and who dies.
      Spitzbergen has suitable seas, isolation, some really miserable coal to mine (give them a chance to survive at their desired bronze age levels) and the polar bears need feeding as we render the seals an unreliable food source.

  4. Free college education (US). Its a twofer; you get less religiosity and a more capable/wealthier workforce.

    1. Agreed. I’ve said many times before and happy to say it again many times in the future. For many very major reasons it is a no-brainer to provide as much education as each individual of a society wants and is capable of, without any burdens that would inhibit them. It seems clear to me, and I think that there is enough evidence already that demonstrates this, that doing so would be a no risk investment that would benefit pretty much all aspects of society.

      In a nut shell, people are the primary resource of a society and investing to aquire the best quality primary resource you can will yield a better society.

      1. The problem in the US is that the Evangelical churches have their own private schools and they also set up Christian colleges which don’t really teach education at all.

        Those schools are not quite as bad as the Islamic madrassas, but they’re not a whole lot better.

        1. Agreed. Good, secular, curriculum standards well enforced would need to be a major part of it.

      2. Germany does this. Not only that, but they offer a free college education to international students as well. A significant fraction are from the USA. For the Sciences and Applied Sciences, the courses are already in English. Most other programs are predominantly in German. Some proficiency in the language is recommended because outside of class it would be quite isolating.

        The authorities have no plans to discourage international students because they have noticed that many stay on to become valuable contributors to the economy. Even those who go home after getting a degree carry with them an alignment to Germany and might engage in commerce or academic coordination with German organisations.

        The USA would definitely benefit from government subsidy of post-secondary education, socialist though that might seem.

        1. If Germany had provided this when I was going to school, I’d be there as fast as possible, provided I could afford to live there.

        2. Of course there is already a “government subsidy” of post-secondary education. Government spending in the U.S. for tertiary education for fiscal year 2015 is about $350B (Billion).In comparison, welfare spending is $454B, transportation $277B, defense $800B, etc.. The one that struck me is interest on debt of $334B. Primary and secondary education spending is $545B and those grades, K-12 are free.

        3. Norway does also. I received my undergraduate and graduate university education at the University of Oslo in the 1980s free of charge. However, the University required all students, regardless of citizenship, to pay NOK 200 (USD 33 in 1980) per semester to cover the national health services fee 🙂 Equally impressive, on all mandatory geological field trips to localities throughout Europe, all students received, cash in hand, a daily allowance of NOK 150 (USD 30 in 1980 dollars). With no financial help from my parents, I paid all my expenses, room, board and books every year by working full-time during the summer vacation in the micropaleontology laboratory at the geology institute.

          Norway required students from the USA to have completed four semesters of full-time study in the USA before they could begin at a Norwegian university.

          3. Yes, you have to be fluent. That’s easy. All a foreigner need do is seven things: 1) be 100% motivated to learn the language and refuse to speak one’s mother tongue 2) take an intensive 6 hours a day, 6 week course to learn the grammar, and cram the grammar books 3) watch TV-programs for children every day 6:00 to 6:45PM (children speak very distinctly, as do adults when they talk to children, and old people when they talk to everyone) 4) read the dictionary cover to cover as many times as it takes to disintegrate the binding, then buy a new one and repeat the process 5) read the Norwegian sub-titles in English films and jot down all the Norwegian words you don’t know, and repeat these words for several hours until you learn them (fortunately, no movies are dubbed in Norwegian, only sub-titled) 6) read Norwegian literature and history at least two hours every day. 7) live in a dorm with Norwegian students and associate regularly with them, especially at their weekend dorm parties, but avoid the home-made wine :-O Follow these guidelines and you are ready for full-time course-work after about three to six months. What’s more, you get three Scandinavian languages and many Norwegian dialects for the price of one, – they are variations of the same theme 🙂 With some extra effort, you can then learn Faroese and Icelandic.

  5. Create a comprehensive social safety net such that being born in the US means you never have to worry about dying due to starvation, exposure, or curable disease.

  6. Similar to Grania’s comment, as a matter of child welfare, require all kids to attend public schools and get a rational, secular education (US). If they ultimately decide to become religious nuts, that’s up to them

    1. I second that motion! I can only speak for the US but religious organizations should have to open their books, be audited and pay taxes just like everyone else. They are a huge burden on society in more ways than one.

      1. The only ways I can think of is to make the religious calling financially less attractive and to reduce the amount of cash that can be spent on various conversion operations.

        If the tax receipts brought in by this tax were to go exclusively to improving the social safety net, then the decreased survival anxiety that thereby results would presumably decrease religiosity.

        1. It would cause a lot of old churches on expensive land to shut down because they couldn’t pay their property taxes. However, those people would not stop being religious. They would consolidate into larger churches on cheaper land, and they would resent secularists for taking away their privilege. I can’t see how any of that would make anyone in those groups less a believer in God. It would simply make them a group of believers with a bigger fortress mentality and martyr complex than they already have.

      2. In the hoary tradition of Jesus and the temple’s money-changers, it would also drive the fraudsters — the ones proselytizing patently absurd beliefs; who convert, indoctrinate, and fleece hundreds of thousands of the gullible — out of the “religion” business (at least the fraudsters whose motivations are financial).

  9. The defunding of the Catholic school system, specifically in my home province of Ontario (Canada) and generally in any jurisdiction where they receive public funding.

    Amongst other faults, the Catholic school system is notable for demonizing homosexuals, resisting attempts to rationalize sex education, resisting anti-bullying legislation, resisting the introduction of an HPV vaccination program on “moral” grounds and using taxpayer money to transport students to anti abortion demonstrations.

    Why anybody would entrust their children to these theocratic scumbags is beyond me, given the Catholic church’s 2 milllenia track record of institutionalized paedophila and child abuse, but let’s at least get them out of the education system.

    1. Yep and right now only The Green Party is addressing this as part of their platform!

    2. ==demonizing homosexuals==

      Fortunately, they can also supply the resulting need for exorcists…

    3. I completely agree – do away with public and “separate” school boards in Canada. As I recall as a kid growing up in Calgary, “separate” meant only Catholic.

  10. I would like to shut down all religious tv and radio stations or at least increase the cost of operating them. I realize that there is a whole free speech issue with that idea, but slowly breaking down the safe religious echo-chamber that has been built around them should accelerate the demise.

      1. Hmmm. I read the “banning rule” as the ban of ban of religion as a whole. I was just removing a path of the meme transmission.

        I’m sure some are tax exempt here. I’ve never researched it out.

        1. I suspect that banning stuff just forces it underground – like the alcohol prohibition back in the days of Al Capone. There’s nothing religion likes more than to think it’s being persecuted.

          ~Grania

          1. Yes, and that same problem accrues to taking away their tax exempt status.

            In the US there is also the first amendment to contend with. You *could* take away their tax exempt status, but because of the first amendment to do so you’d probably have to remove the tax exemptions of all secular charities too.

            In general, if the only solution a person can think of is a big stick to force people to behave the way they want, then that person isn’t thinking about the problem deeply enough.

          3. I don’t see a First Amendment issue with allowing for-profit Salvation Inc. to set up a tax-exempt charitable foundation for doing good works, just as McDonald’s does with its Ronald McDonald House foundation.

          4. Indeed, many legitimate churches already do this (separate their religious finances from their charitable arms).

    2. For the past generation or so in the U.S., religious organizations have been buying up more and more frequencies/licenses on the fm radio band (between 88.1 and 92.9) that were by law originally allotted to ‘public broadcasting.’ They could do so because they had the money for it and because the FCC did not oversee the public trust that is its duty. The other evening I counted five Christian stations in the range; although it is highly distasteful to listen, I can assure WEIT readers that they primarily 1) raise more money and 2) criticize secular and liberal politics and culture.

      As a small reform, I’d like to see a fairer distribution of the ‘public channels,’ even if it would mean that some frequencies would at times go unused. While it is far harder for a secular group to raise the money, begin and persevere in radio broadcasting, there ought to be other voices on the air.

  12. I’d like to see churches pay taxes and be subject to the same regulations that other businesses are.

    For instance, a church day care doesn’t have to be inspected by the health dept, doesn’t have to meet building codes for safety among other things that they get away with.

    If they are going to run a business and compete with other businesses then they should have to operate under the same regulations that we all have to abide by.

    1. Basically, organized religion is nothing more than a Worship Hut (TM) franchise business and should be treated like any other franchise operation such as McDonalds, Pizza Hut (ha, ha) and so on.

      My apologies to actual franchises for the invidious comparison to religion.

      1. With some of those franchises, you might want to apologize to some of the religious denominations.

        It’s hard for me to believe I just typed that, but there it is.

        1. The way some corporatistas act, it may be that corporations are not merely “persons” but at least demigods.

  13. In the US military I would make them enlisted men rather than officers. Making them officers gives them too much official sanction.

  14. USA: school vouchers that basically subsidize religious schools.

    Related: looser regulations for church-run day cares, which gives them a competitve advantage over day cares that do things right

  15. require all schools, colleges & universities to adhere to a standard secular curriculum as a condition of accreditation – and enforce it. Fine if Liberty “University” wants to give degrees to anyone who can afford it and survive the religious indoctrination but the rest of us don’t have to recognize those degrees as evidence of an education.

    2. Does anybody have to recognise Liberty ‘degrees’ currently? If so then what does accreditation mean?

      1. I heard at one point about 15 years ago that some fundy schools in (I think) California were having trouble getting accreditation, so they just created their own accreditation mechanism!

  17. remove the tax benefit for donating to a church in the US…if you don’t get to reduce your taxable wages by the amount you give, people would give less…this coupled with the removal of tax exemption status of the church itself will choke off its sources of revenue. People would be more apt to give to a charity so they could see the tax benefit.

  18. To reduce religiosity we generally know has a direct relation to improved education. By this we mean better education at all levels, especially at K thru 12 in the U.S. Just providing more education, such as free college for everyone would not be practical in the U.S. but the cost should be much more reasonable than it is currently. However, the country has no plan and is not likely to get it done without a top national priority and removal of state control over much of our education system in the U.S.

    Think of it this way. Where is religion more dominate than Alabama or Mississippi? It does not get any worse. As long as these states have the control that they do with educating their children the religion will ferment and the education goes further downhill.

    The idea that education in America will somehow get better under this 50 states doing their thing is worse than a joke. It’s like 50 states with a mission to get to the moon. So change the laws on who is in control of education and proceed from there.

    1. If the disease of “American Exceptionalism” is in a chronic form at the national level, it is in an acute form at the state level, some more than others.

  20. Netherlands here. I think I also answered this in the other open thread, but I’ll glady say it again: a clear separation of church and state, as advocated by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

  21. What if one of the big American TV networks put on a popular TV show that featured witty skeptics (people like Stephen Fry) discussing the implications of various theological positions with excitable theologians of various stripes?

    If it is funny people will watch. And if they do a good job with the right good-natured vibe, the silliness of many beliefs will become apparent to anyone with even a slightly open mind.

  22. Require mandatory classes in critical thinking, science and the enlightenment. Start in public school!!

    1. Exactly. I had a teacher in the late 60s who told us to question everything, to not believe everything we read, to not even believe everything he told us. There was debate every day in his class. We learned how to think critically. No one slept in his class.

      1. Yeah I learned the scientific method in elementary school but they also made us say the Lord’s Prayer and invited the Gideons to hand out bibles.

  23. If you could change one thing…

    My modest proposal parallels Denis Diderot’s: strangle the clergy with the entrails of the oligarchs.

    Sorry, that was inappropriate; it changes two things.

  25. Here in Germany I would stop the churches collecting tax under the auspices of the Tax Office. The get €11 billion per year through it, and if you’ve been baptized as a baby, and you’re on the records, you have to pay until you officially leave.

    I refused to fill out their declaration because it was deceitfully worded, and because I quite honestly am not completely sure I wasn’t baptized as a baby. So they are checking the records of the Catholic Church *in Australia* to see if they can charge me 5% tax on my my last 15 years income in Germany.

    1. Holy Cow. They still do that?! I’m quite suprised to find out that our neighbours (Germany and Belgium too) spend tax money on churches. I mean, we have religious schools as well, but to give money directly to the catholic church (or to protestants for that matter) would cause a huge row.

      1. I’m shocked too! I’d sort of heard of religious taxes in Germany, but I had no idea they were compulsory, or as high as 5%. That they can force you to do this is outrageous!

        1. My Getman friend told me about that years ago. I was shocked at the time too and it comes right off your pay.

          1. I didn’t expect them to come after come me, either, nor did I know that if I’d been baptized in Australia, I’d have to pay until I officially leave the church.

      2. I hear they have some cages at a church in Munster for the recalcitrant.

    2. I would have thought that would be a very strong incentive to leave the Church as quickly as humanly possible.

      cr

      1. People have gotten used to the idea — they’ve been doing it since about 1880, I think. (When the Pope signed the Konkordat with Hitler, the first thing on the list was the continuing with the church tax.)

        People here are often insist that Germany has a separation between church and state, and when say the church tax demonstrates that this is not the case they often disagree quite vehemently.

        People are leaving the church in droves at the moment, but because of the many other reasons to do so, not because of the intrinsic wrongness of this tax.

  26. Ending state funding (via written-into-law tax dodges) for religions, as so many others have noted, is hard to beat as a go-to example.

    But shoring up education belongs on the short list as well. Specifically, all of us here know too well that biology education is pathetic insofar as Evolution is often simply left out or hurriedly glossed over.

    Also, there’re far too many loopholes for private schools and at-home study. Part of me thinks it’d be a good idea to simply require all students attend publicly-funded schools…but an acceptable compromise would be significantly more rigorous accreditation and testing for non-public schools and little hesitation to require public school attendance for students in such settings who aren’t demonstrably in the third quartile of general-population students. (I’m obviously ignoring special needs students for the purposes of this discussion; they’re not the problem.)

    b&

  27. Teach religious history in a secular history class. Not the dogma of the cults but its place in the historical record of society and its basic tenets and how its literature was collected. Its hard to believe you arent using special pleading in order to claim your religion is somehow different than all the others when you see how they developed/ spread and dissolved/morphed over time.
    Placing the timeline of religions against the timeline of earth history – 2000yr old books against a 4 billion year old planet – shows how insignificant the writings are.
    Start this and critical thinking skills at a primary level.

    1. stop scaring kids half to death with all this hocus-pocus, mystery, always sees what you do, man in the sky “thing”. guilt, fear, distrust are what come from that. wait until they can make their own decisions vs. making their decisions for them. even though, for theists,that would be signing their own death warrants.

    2. Good point. It’s kind of ironic that something that could very likely undermine a religion’s grip on one’s psyche is actually more religious education, only as you suggest, a kind of religious education that would look into each religion’s (including Hinduism, Mormonism, Scientology) origins, holy texts and truth claims.

      1. I know it worked for me. Searching for information about other religions in order to tell them why they were wrong and my southern baptist religion was right filled me with enough doubt to walk away from all religion.

    3. I’ve long advocated for something along these lines (including proportionate time for secular humanism), to be taught in history or critical-thinking courses. One semester of such instruction and the religious right would stop clamoring to put God back in the classroom.

    4. That’s it! Forget the tax-exemption threads. It will never happen. Politics won’t allow it. Forget free education alone to change minds and hearts. The Jesuits were the smartest guys on the block but they never backed off an inch from Catholic orthodoxy. The only sure fire way to expose the fraud of religiosity is to explain how it got started and why it continues – in short – its historical roots. This means pointing out not only the utter textual inanities of the two principal frauds, the Bible and the Quran but also their similarities to the divinity of the Egyptian gods 2000 years BCE. A history or comparative religion course shouldn’t be as hard to require as say a sex education course because the former is based on documentary evidence while the latter, arguably, on (diverse) opinion.

  28. NZ is much less religious than most of your countries – almost 42% no religion at the last census – so we must be doing something right, although I’m not entirely sure what it is.

    Because good quality health care is available to all for free (there are private hospitals for elective procedures for those that want them), state housing for those that need it (though we need more), a pretty good social security safety net, standard basic curriculum in all primary and secondary schools (religious schools have to teach to it to receive state funding) etc, there’s not a need for religion.

    Education focuses as a lot on skills like independent and critical thinking. We don’t have hospitals owned by churches, although there are a few that own places that care for the elderly.

    Universities have to meet criteria to call themselves that. Colleges and universities are different things here. If you went to a religious college, your qualification is not considered the equivalent of a University degree, and it’s illegal to call it that. The Ministry of Education accredits institutions, and they have to meet various criteria in whatever category they want to educate students in to qualify. Schools are closed down by the government if they don’t come up to scratch.

    I suppose I’m talking myself into the conclusion that education is key.

    2. I’d make one lesson a week for 14 year olds compulsory religious instruction, with the proviso that The instruction is by different religions in approximate proportion to their international popularity and also includes all the religions of students in the class. NZ is already well down the track of unbelief and while this might produce a few conversions, it should generate much more bored scepticism.

    3. “Because good quality health care is available to all for free (there are private hospitals for elective procedures for those that want them)”

      Interestingly, I had my heart valve repair at Mercy Hospital in Auckland (used to be Mater Misericordiae). Originally a Catholic nursing order, it has transformed into a major private hospital, only nominally still Catholic; in the week I was there I saw nothing of a religious nature. I could have gone on the public waiting list and had the op free in Auckland Hospital (about 6 month wait), but since I had health insurance and my specialist advised that sooner was better, and also because I wanted to have the op in winter so I didn’t waste summer recuperating, I ‘went private’. Cost $42,000 of which insurance covered $35,000. Auckland is the most expensive place for operations, elsewhere in NZ the op would have cost slightly less so my insurance would have covered the lot.

      cr

  29. It will never happen in the US, but it would be nice if we could ban parents from taking children to church, bible school, etc. when they are younger than 18 or so. This would prevent the brainwashing that obviously occurs with young children. Fortunately, most of us recover sooner or later, but I’m willing to bet that religiosity would decrease dramatically within a few years.

  30. Outlaw home schooling except where there are medical reasons for home schooling and even then, with today’s technology, virtual schooling would work just as well.

    1. I know a number of hardcore ballet students who homeschool or use online learning to accommodate their busy training schedule. I expect the same is true of child actors, Olympic gymnasts, musical prodigies, and so on.

      So rather than outlaw something these kids need, we should put controls in place to ensure they’re being properly educated.

      1. My friend homeschools her two boys and she isn’t teaching them anything weird. One boy has proclaimed he is atheist.

        1. My wife and I homeschooled our now adult son (for non-religious reasons). He is a confident atheist who is one of the best critical thinkers I’ve ever known.

          1. We also have an adult daughter who was not home schooled. She even spent some time in a Catholic high school. She is also an articulate atheist.

      2. I completely agree about not outlawing homeschooling.

        I confess, however, to mixed feelings regarding the type of monomaniacal childhood concentration that sometimes occurs in the situations you mention. Sure, like others I appreciate, and admire, and applaud many of the end results — but at what cost to a well-balanced childhood, especially for the vast majority of these kids who don’t go on to become Olympic medalists, or concert musicians, or prima ballerinas assoluta? I wonder how many of the parents become Béla Károlyi manqués in an effort to yet fulfill their own unrealized ambitions and fantasies.

        1. I hear what you’re saying, and overbearing ballet moms can be an issue, but the vast majority of girls at the upper levels in my school are there because they want to be; it’s a choice they made, not one they were pressured into.

          And boys too. Particularly for guys who aren’t good at sports, dance can be a way for them to feel comfortable in their own bodies and do something awesome that their friends can’t do.

          We have a psychologist on staff and try to be alert to problems of this sort. If someone’s not motivated, it will show in their performance, and often the best thing to do in that situation is to divert them into a more conventional career path.

          Even for those who don’t make it, the habits of self-discipline and time management carry over into academics and other endeavors. Our dropouts often go on to become A students at top-rank colleges.

          As far as balanced childhood goes, my unscientific observation is that ballet school is a much friendlier and more supportive environment than your typical high school.

          1. Ballet isuch better now than it was when I was a child in the 70s and I think that reflects a changing attitude toward motivation. In the 70s, negative reinforcement was what it was all about: in school, in dog training, in sports and in the arts. My ballet teacher, yelled at us and made us dance on injuries. I have soft tissue damage in my pelvis from this (and I’m 45).

            Now people finally get that negative and frankly abusive treatment doesn’t motivate very well. The only thing I am dismayed at with dance today for youth, who take it locally and typically non professionally, is that there is a strong emphasis on competition. Your at enter competitive dance to get the better teachers and that just seems crazy. Dance to me isn’t about competition. This is again reflective of our culture.

          2. All teachers and coaches should get modern practical training in animal behaviour. (That’s not my #1 anti-religiosity measure, just a general suggestion)

          3. From my substitute teacher travels/observations here and there, I gather that at least some have gotten (had forced on them) that training, what from giving students tickets, tokens, even candy, as a reward to students for doing what they ought to have done anyway.

            Also, there’s a significant academic education school contingent pumping the use of Hip-Hop in “engaging” certain students in subjects, including math. I am drawing the bloody line there.

            (Although I did once come up with math-related lyrics set to “Home on the Range,” IIRC:

            “Oh give me a home [domain]
            Where the X values roam,
            On the range where the Y values play,
            They coordinate there
            As a well-ordered pair
            In a one-to-one function all day.”)

          4. IF I was a teacher (which I’m not, thank Zeus) and if some wallies tried to coerce me into teaching maths using Hip-hop, the line would indeed be bloody. (“School teacher goes on deadly rampage. 23 social workers massacred.”)

            Besides, the kids aren’t that stupid. They know when their hip-hop is being used as bait, they’ll take the bait and ignore the trap.

            I like your little song, though.

            cr

          5. Not to split hairs (which of course is the phrase always used prior to splitting hairs), but it sounds like you’re talking about positive punishment with the crazy teachers yelling and making you dance through injuries. I will agree that dancing to avoid the consequence of the teacher yelling does serve as a negative reinforcement since you probably danced more to avoid the yelling.

            In either case, I think we’re slowly coming to recognize that positive reinforcement to increase desired behaviors is better. Punishment to reduce undesired behavior often leaves the problem of not clearly illustrated the desired behavior that should be performed.

  31. Good substantive education, especially good skeptical critical thinking.
    A good detailed account of evolution and evolutionary theory, right down to the actual fine grained mechanisms, that I got reading ‘The Selfish Gene’ I believed in evolution already nut that and follow up books really explained the mechanism.
    There is a lot of misunderstanding by the anti evolutionists and their audience fails for it because they don’t have the intellectual equipment to satisfactorily answer those question, fully and naturally

    Then courses in comparative religion to see how many religious ideas predominate. Al with shortcomings, but at least providing alternative ideas.

    And then holding them up to scrutiny.

    2. ” . . . the anti evolutionists and their audience fails for it because they don’t have the intellectual equipment . . . .”

      And the majority actively, willfully resist acquiring that equipment.

  32. IF it were feasible, (in the U.S.) enact federal laws that would place salary caps on what Pastors and evangelists can be paid. Likewise, federal laws that severely restrict exorbitant “gifts” that that these hucksters can accept.

    Remove the tax exempt status of course.

    Strictly enforce federal laws (that are already on the books) prohibiting all religious organizations and Churches from political activity, influence, or endorsing of any candidate.

    Pass laws that prohibit the teaching of, or promoting creationist materials in the public educational system.

    Pass laws that strictly forbid proselytizing or street preaching on school grounds college campuses.

    Zoning laws that restrict how many Churches can be near residential areas.

    Disallowing anyone of faith to run for public office if they are doing so to promote their faith, thereby violating the separation of Church and State.

    These are just a few off the top of my head…

    1. I certainly agree about abolishing the tax exemption for religious institutions and prohibiting creationism from being taught as science in public schools. Your other proposals, however, almost certainly run afoul of the “free exercise” and “free speech” clauses of the First Amendment.

      They would also prove counterproductive in the long run. The answer here is more speech, freer speech, speech ensuring that secular ideas and information get out and thrive in the marketplace. Restricting competing ideas and information always fails eventually, serving only to drive ideology underground, fanning the fervency of its buried embers and making martyrs of its adherents. (Look at how the Russian Orthodox church has flourished following the collapse of the Soviet Union.)

      Also, there are no “federal laws … on the books” prohibiting churches or other religious organizations from engaging in political activity. By engaging in such activity, putatively religious organizations can put their tax-exempt status at risk, by revealing their predominate purpose to be political rather than religious. But under our Constitution, no law (state, local, or federal) can ever restrict, much less prohibit, the religious — or any other American — from engaging in political activity or advocacy.

    2. “Pass laws that strictly forbid . . . street preaching . . . .”

      I’d let local noise/disturbing the peace ordinances take care of that and if they didn’t, I’d start singing operatic arias within twenty feet of the ululating preacher. 😉

  33. I can think of a few things that would help us here in the US of ‘Merka:

    1. Universal (single payer) healthcare and Universal basic income. Zimmerman and Paul’s research shows that religiosity is a trailing indicator of economic insecurity.

    2. Universal gigabit internet access. The web has been great for awareness, outreach, and community building. We should double down on this vector.

    3. (Wonkish) The Federal Reserve needs to raise its inflation target from 2% to 4%. So does the ECB. This would unlock excess savings, creating investment, jobs, and more social mobility, as well as lessening debt burdens.

    4. Get rid of single-member congressional districts. It’s not just gerrymandering and low midterm turnout that’s killing the secular progressive agenda. It’s also the basic geography of political parties. In many states it is next to impossible to draw districts that will produce a representative outcome. Without this, Congress will continue to be dominated by Republicans.

    5. (Unserious) Have more interfaith conferences with Chris Mooney and Templeton.

  34. In Finland we have not one but two state churches (Evangelical Lutheran and Orthodox) but even though 70% of people are still members of a church, religiosity has been declining steadily so that a large number of the members of those churches are actually totally or almost non-religious.

    You don’t have fight the evil (=religion), just watch it fade away.

      3. Yes, the EVL church is desperately trying anything to get people to come to church. But they fight in vain.

  36. Same here in Australia (although the situation here is, of course, not nearly so bad).

    Religions are simply cheating here, brainwashing the young rather than doing the hard slog of having to persuade more sceptical and jaded adults, which is what I have to do with all my ideas. I’m not allowed to fashion mental playdough into whatever shape I like; nor should anyone else be.

    1. Henry, I agree totally. With only eight percent of the population as regular church goers the balance of religious power is skewed towards a majority. I think one of the best things we could do here in Australia is to rid charities of tax exempt status if they get involved in issues in the political arena especially if they are outside their stated reasons for running the charity

  37. I live in Ontario, Canada, and would like to cease public financial support of religious schools. We have both public and Catholic school systems. Let’s teach all of the kids what we really know, how the world really works, and their parents can teach whatever myths they want to on their own time on their own dime.

  38. I would like to see our leading lights of deevangilization, the Coynes, Dennetts, Dawkinses, Harrises, Krausses, Weinbergs et al now turn to a concerted (personal private) effort toward bringing on board their fellow scientists to start making the same noises publicly that they have been making.

    Our LGBT comrades have now finally achieved critical mass – a turning point. Anyone, especially public figures, who now still insists on questioning Gay rights automatically gets relegated to the clown car under a hail storm of public opprobrium.

    The more people of intellectual prestige i.e. roll models like, say, the folks at NASA, or members of the NAS slip in hints deligitimizing religion (a position they already secretly hold) the sooner the turning point can be reached where publicly attaching legitimacy to religion automatically gets you relegated to the clown car under a hail storm of public opprobrium.

    1. that is true. I am a lesbian and when I tried to create a negative impression of a canadian out lesbian politican, I was told by straight people that my comments were out of line – we all agreed she was doing a bad job, but no one phobed. it was actually really amazing and hearting to me.

  39. I live in Canada and I would point out that the American Psyche Association has finally started deeming religiousness to be a mental health disorder.

  41. Religiosity is an entrenched slow moving target and we have to find somehow to penetrate it and that is our young.
    Educate and eliminate inequality, this young mind and developing brain may give us a chance to reach critical mass and possibly a feed back loop.
    Just as Steven Picker showed in Better Angels.. something like the pacifying civilizing, humanitarian processes that went before. It shows that things can develop and become the norm especially from something so entrenched as religion is, but in his book, it was violence.
    The young, our young, are the key.

  43. Echoing some of the comments above, in the UK I would like to have a compulsory GCSE (exams taken by all 16 year olds) in critical thinking. This would dramatically reduce the ability of any authority including clerics, politicians, snake oil salesmen etc to get away with what they currently get away with.

  44. In the UK i would abolish the Really Bad Idea that is Free Schools

    They are basically allowed to churn out an endless line of indoctrinated kids (any faith will do) and are only very lightly controlled what they should teach by government.

    Other but smaller things are the compulsory prayer in state schools, which in turn is caused by the lack of official separation of church and state.

    But Free Schools are worst, so they need to go. The state should have a monopoly on education.

    1. Compulsory prayer never did me any harm 😉

      It’s more symbolic than effective. I’d even incline to the theory that it’s a bit like cowpox – helps to inoculate against the worse disease of evangelical religion.

      If anybody showed signs of taking it seriously, then I’d be worried.

      cr

  45. I Would encourage all religious people to read the appropriate holy book from cover to cover.

  46. Religions are essentially irrational.

    Bertrand Russel said that the human species is in the infancy of rationality. He also said “…that most people would rather die than think – and they do.”

    If only we could find a way to shift people from irrational to rational mode; from ‘feed & breed’ survival mode to actually using their intellectual equipment. Perhaps the demise of religion would help?

    Otherwise, the future of the human species, plus that of vast numbers of other species looks really rather bleak.

  47. Logic, behavioral psychology and psycholinguistics taught from primary school onwards. Pinker and Kahneman should be mandatory curriculum. Kids would love it.

  48. The key has got to be protecting children from indoctrination. There’s a reason the Catholic Church makes such a big deal of First Communion with appointment of Godparents who are responsible for a child’s growth as a “good Catholic”. Things a child is taught at an early age by adults they respect are hard to unlearn. Making History of Religions 101 a part of every child’s education would be a step in the right direction, though the acceptable content of the course will be hotly disputed by parents and churches.

  49. The key has got to be protecting children from indoctrination. There’s a reason the Catholic Church makes such a big deal of First Communion with appointment of Godparents who are responsible for a child’s growth as a “good Catholic”. Things a child is taught at an early age by adults they respect are hard to unlearn. Making History of Religions 101 a part of every child’s education would be a step in the right direction, though the acceptable content of the course will be hotly disputed by parents and churches.

  50. I think I covered that yesterday (with revoking religious special privileges concerning taxes).

  51. Esp Swedes, pls comment. In places like Sweden, where there is one official state church, I wonder if that fact hasn’t contributed to the steep decline in religiosity? And yes I know there are other churches in Sweden, but my impression is that they’re small. Mostly everyone is either Lutheran or nothing, right? Has having an official state religion contributed to the decline?

    In the US, people get fed up with one church and go fishing for another that fits their outlook better, never considering None of the Above. Does having an official religion (Muslim countries excluded) contribute to its demise?

    1. Hmm, I don’t think so. There hasn’t been an official state church in Sweden since January 1st, 2000. Sweden debated the abolishment of the state church for several decades. For the last fifteen years, the Lutheran church in Sweden has had the same status as any other religion. In spite of the fact that Sweden has the lowest church attendance in Europe, approximately 78% of Swedish parents in 2000 chose to christen their babies in the Lutheran church, – 49% of babies born in Sweden are christened in the Lutheran church today, while 66% of Swedes are members of the Lutheran church. 84% of burials are Lutheran. I suppose this may indicate that although there are a majority of non-believers, most are still cultural Lutherans.

  52. I think we need to push secular education and higher education standards in primary schools. The US is being left behind by more education minded countries. I’m not concerned with us being #1, I simply want to be able to contribute as much as any others far into the future. So, I think there’s three things we should strive for. 1) We need to get critical thinking skills into K-12, as well as more STEM classes in general. 2) Curriculum and testing standards need to be developed by a roundtable of STEM academia, not a few lobbyists and entrepreneurs. 3) Raise teacher wages to bring in more and higher quality educators (some states are doing this already, Michigan comes to mind).

    I also completely agree with free higher education and removing tax exempt status on religious organizations.

    1. “3) Raise teacher wages to bring in more and higher quality educators . . . .”

      I wonder if English BA/MBA/JD Mitt Romney would be interested in teaching? (sarcasm)
      He seems to be a bright guy, but could he ever be paid enough to satisfy him or his Wall St. venture capitalist/hedge fund mgr. confreres? To the extent that such a duty exists, seems they have no less a duty than anyone else to become career teachers.

      Would you agree that there are at least a few outstanding teachers who teach for the love of it? It can’t be just about money, can it? I’m sure there are some outstanding Catholic-affiliated university Ph.D. Catholic priests who are outstanding pedagogues, notwithstanding their Catholicism. And it seems any outstanding professor – and for sure any Nobellist – ought to be paid more.

      Slightly off-topic: were it merely and solely a matter of money, would $400K/yr be enough money to put up with the life substance-draining headaches of being President of the United States? Does the job hold THAT much “prestige”? I know of a Division I university football coach making at least $1.2M/yr, and others make 2-3 times that amount. Is it possible that a sports coach could be paid enough to compensate for his apparently insufficient prestige vis-à-vis the POTUS? (IIRC, the U.S. National Football League commissioner makes $40M/yr.)
      With his $50(?)B net worth, how does Bill Gates’s prestige compare to that of the POTUS?

      1. I’ve no doubt there’s many teachers who feel a calling to the profession. I meant more that we need some additional incentive to compete with corporate salaries. And don’t get me started on sports staff salaries, just ridiculous!

  53. I echo the ideas from my fellow Ontarioers. However, I would suggest an amendment, as that’s what would be necessary. Hence I propose: change the constitution to have no provisions about religious schools of any kind, and make it clear that religious instruction of any kind is not supportable by public revenues.

    If I can be allowed a second, it would be to eliminate all public funding for private schools period. I am not sure which provinces do this besides Quebec anyway, though. (The “private schools” are topped up by tuition or whatever for their *additions* to the curriculum, for extra sports/cultural activities, etc.)

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